TL;DR: A typical $5–10k website project ships in four weeks: Week 0 is the signed brief and SOW, Week 1 is design exploration and the homepage concept, Week 2 is full page design and design system, Week 3 is build and CMS wiring, Week 4 is content load, QA, and launch. Expect 3–5 days for the brief before the sprint clock starts. The phase that slips, always, is content from the client. Block dates early, write the brief first, and treat day one of Week 1 as immovable. Without a signed brief, a $5k project becomes a $9k project in disguise.
Most agencies will not publish their process because their process is vibes and Slack. Ours is written down. A four-week website sprint is the shape of most of our $5–10k projects. Here is what lands in each week, what we need from you to hit it, and where the timeline slips in practice.
Week 0: the brief
Before the sprint starts, we write a brief together. A brief is a one-page document that answers five questions:
- What does this site need to do?
- Who is landing on it, from where?
- What are the three things they should take away?
- What is the primary CTA?
- What does "good" look like (one or two reference sites)?
No brief, no sprint. A $5k project without a signed brief is a $9k project in disguise.
Typical turnaround: three to five days from first call to signed brief. This is the part that slips, always on the client side. We have learned to block the sprint start date so clients get a real deadline for finalizing the brief.
Deliverable: one-page signed brief, a scope doc with line items, and a signed SOW.
Week 1: structure and direction
Monday: kickoff. We walk through the brief one more time, confirm scope, and agree on two references for visual direction.
By Wednesday: sitemap and content outline. Every page, every section, every CTA. This is a text document, not a design. It catches structural problems early, before a single pixel is placed.
By Friday: design direction — two options. Not full page designs. Two distinct directions for the home page hero and one section, each with a different typographic voice and visual language. You pick one. No "combine them both." That is a different sprint.
What we need from you: copy drafts or notes for every section, plus any brand assets (logo, fonts if you have them, colors if you have them).
Deliverables: sitemap, content outline, two design directions. One is picked by end of week 1.
Week 2: design
Monday: kickoff on the chosen direction. Small adjustments based on feedback from week 1.
By Wednesday: home page designed, desktop + mobile. Full fidelity. Type, spacing, interaction notes, motion notes.
By Friday: all interior pages designed, desktop + mobile. This is the heaviest week. Five page layouts, two breakpoints each, ten screens.
Review happens Friday afternoon. One macro round of feedback: this section does not work, this page needs to lead differently. We absorb it Monday of week 3.
What we need from you: finalized copy by Wednesday of week 2, or we will fill with Lorem Ipsum and your launch will slip.
Deliverables: full Figma file, every page at two breakpoints, interaction notes.
Week 3: build
Monday: design revisions from Friday's review land.
Tuesday through Friday: we build. Next.js 16, TypeScript, Tailwind. Design tokens wired up. Components built once, used everywhere. Motion implemented. Contact form wired to whatever backend we decided on.
By end of week 3: staging site live at a private URL. All pages, all interactions, mostly final content. Still some rough edges.
What we need from you: a final review of the staging link, content corrections, any last copy changes.
Deliverables: staging site, fully functional, on your actual content, ready for the polish week.
Week 4: polish, SEO, launch
Monday and Tuesday: micro polish. All the small things: animation easing, hover state timing, mobile tap target sizing, dark-section contrast, empty states, 404 page.
Wednesday: SEO and accessibility pass. Meta tags per page, OG images, structured data (Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList), sitemap.xml, robots.txt, accessibility audit (axe + manual keyboard test).
Thursday: launch prep. Final Lighthouse run (95+ across the board or we do not launch), production deployment to Vercel, DNS change planned.
Friday: launch. DNS cutover. A 30-minute window where both sites are up to validate. Checklist run: analytics firing, form submissions arriving, redirects working.
What we need from you: availability Friday morning for the cutover and the final checklist sign-off.
Deliverables: live site, handoff doc, repo access transferred, redirect map applied.
Week 5 (included): tuning
Not technically a sprint week but it is included in our $5–10k scope. Seven days of post-launch support for the small things that only show up in production:
- The one font that looks off on Windows Chrome at 125% zoom.
- The hover state on the CTA that is one shade too dark on actual displays.
- The Safari animation that jitters on older iPhones.
- The meta description you want to tweak after you see the Google preview.
Not included: new sections, new pages, scope additions. Those are a fixed-fee follow-up.
Where this timeline actually slips
Honest failure modes across maybe 40 of these sprints.
Copy. 80% of slips. Clients underestimate how long writing copy takes, or decide mid-week 2 they want to rewrite the positioning. We now push hard on week 1 to get copy done. If copy is not landing by Wednesday week 2, we talk about the slip right then instead of pretending it will catch up.
Scope creep. 15% of slips. "While you're in there, can you add a blog?" No. Blog is a separate scope. Write it down, price it, start it after launch.
Decision makers. 5% of slips. Someone not on the kickoff call needs to approve the design in week 3 and has different opinions. We now require named approvers in the SOW.
When a 4-week sprint is wrong
Two cases.
Too fast: a complex site with 10+ pages, custom 3D, an e-commerce layer, or content migration from a legacy CMS. That is a 6–8 week project. Do not compress it.
Too slow: a one-page launch site for a startup with the copy ready on day one. That is a 7-to-10-day turnaround, not four weeks. We will tell you.
What you get at the end
A live site, clean code, a repo, a handoff doc, a Loom walkthrough, a tuning week, and a studio you can hire again for the next phase. Nothing else is promised, which is exactly why the sprint works.
If you want a site shipped in four weeks, tell us your deadline and the complexity of what you want. We will tell you honestly whether the 4-week sprint fits or we need to scope differently.